V
Ramnarayan
The
mystery of the wicket keeping gloves
Footloose
and fancy free one Sunday morning back in 1982 or thereabouts, Vasu (S
Vasudevan, who led Tamil Nadu to a Ranji Trophy triumph in 1986-87) and I
decided to amuse ourselves by watching a V division match of the Chennai
league. Actually there was an ulterior motive behind our decision: we wanted to
catch a glimpse of a young batsman who had scored a big hundred a couple of
weeks earlier, and just back from a masters' degree in the US, he was going to
be our new boss.
We
had heard unconfirmed stories of the imperious if quixotic ways of our
prospective employer, and he turned out to be quite an impressive figure on the
cricket ground. We didn't have long to wait to see him in action, as the tall
and athletically built young man, let's call him Raj, opened the innings, and
moved with great style if not speed between the wickets.
Raj
seemed to continue where he left off in the previous match. He cut, drove and
pulled with great assurance and his powerful shots frequently pierced the
infield and found the boundary. He raced to nearly 30 in no time, and Vasu and
I wondered how we would deal with a boss with two successive centuries under
his belt, while breathing a sigh of relief with the knowledge he could not
become our teammate, at least till next season, having already played for a
lower division team.
Something
then happened that not only cut Raj's innings short but provided some
unexpected comic relief. Between deliveries, Raj, the non-striker, took a few
steps to chat with his partner, when the bowler most unsportingly knocked the
bails off and made a loud appeal for run-out. The poor umpire, as shocked as
anyone else, had no choice but to declare Raj out. Furious with rage, Raj let
loose what seemed from beyond the boundary to be a barrage of expletives at the
bowler and stormed off towards the pavilion. Along the way, he applied the
brakes and just as angrily stormed off towards the wicket keeper. "Give
them back, you ungrateful, unsporting bastards!" he must have said to the
man behind the stumps, for he meekly surrendered his gloves, and Raj
triumphantly marked away, with two pairs of gloves tucked under his arms. Vasu
and I later learnt that the fielding side had discovered on arrival at the
ground that someone had forgotten to pack wicket keeper's gloves in the kit
bag. It had been wicket keeper batsman Raj who had sportingly lent the
opponents his personal gear.
